Fun With Sub-Area Equity

By Frank on February 22, 2010

One neighborhood in the Puget Sound is eager to get light rail. Another neighborhood is trying to find ways to keep it out.

Guess which neighborhood is actually getting light rail?

(via)

Posted in

red tube x videos x hamster

The Winter of Our Discontent….

By serial catowner on February 19, 2010

…or, the years the locusts ate. The outline of the future is now reasonably clear- in order
to keep a liveable climate, humanity will live in buildings on transit lines, and this society
has to be built in the next 20 years. You can stop thinking about the next car you’re going
to buy.

Some readers may disagree with this assessment, which springs in part from already
having seen one such tectonic shift in society and the environment. It may seem almost
inconceiveable that the foods we eat today might disappear, that the plants and animals
around us may disappear, and that we will be living in a social environment, often many
stories above the earth, almost unknown to us today.

Fortunately, we do not need to take sides, or act as advocates- at least, not yet. Only
events can move the vast mass of public opinion needed to effect change in America, and
only time is needed to bring those events to pass. In fact, considering the quality of
leadership in the Seattle Mayor’s office today, this would be a good time to go slowly and
check all the calculations twice.

In the meantime, enjoy it while it lasts. In 30 years you’re going to be remembering
wistfully the sights you see today. Pause to admire and engrave on your memory these
sights.

Posted in

red tube x videos x hamster

WSDOT logic

By Matt the Engineer on February 18, 2010

We all know WSDOT loves cars, but this is just sad.

  1. Go to the WSDOT home page to see their list of priorities, click on “Climate Change.”
  2. Look for their “Climate Change Tools,” click on “Moving Washington.”
  3. Notice first that this page is aimed at reducing congestion.  Then notice that their first strategy is to add capacity*.

So according to WSDOT, more capacity = climate change tool.  Which is absolutely true – adding road capacity is one tool to change the climate.  I just don’t think that changing the climate should be one of our goals.

* I recognize that they actually say “add capacity strategically”, which is defined elsewhere as freeing up bottlenecks.  But that’s beside the point.  Freeing up bottlenecks will reduce traffic, encouraging people to live further from their jobs.  Implying otherwise is blatant greenwashing.

[update]

Cool.  Someone from WSDOT must read this blog.  Some time between yesterday and today they’ve changed their website to remove the “Moving Washington” link from their climate change page.  They are still greenwashing road building, they’re just hiding it.

Compare the current page to the older page (thanks Google archive).  Strangely, they also removed their goals for reducing VMT by 50% in the next 40 years.

Posted in

red tube x videos x hamster

Seattle should be the first carbon neutral city.

By Matt the Engineer on February 17, 2010

KUOW* recently played one of Alex Steffen’s Town Hall talks from a few months ago, and I highly recommend listening to them.  He claims that Seattle has a world reputation as a green city, which is based purely on our clean hydroelectric energy source, not the way we run our city or region.  But we could use this free marketing with our geographic luck and some hard work to convert our city to the world’s first that is carbon neutral – setting an example for other cities to follow.

Our luck extends beyond geography.  It turns out that our own Bill Gates has announced that he will use his foundation to try to get the entire world on track to be carbon neutral.  Perhaps we can convince our politicians, businesses, and citizens to get on board as well.

* if you listen to podcasts I highly recommend adding Speakers’ Forum to your list.  It’s a weekly broadcast of speakers from a wide range of subjects at local venues.

Posted in

red tube x videos x hamster

A Brief History of Recent Seattle Broadband Efforts

By Frank on February 13, 2010

This is a bit off-topic for this blog, but it’s infrastructure related, so why not?

The Mayor’s office recently announced its intent to respond to a Request for Information (RFI) from Google to provide high-speed broadband to the city. This isn’t the first time a Seattle Mayor had a plan for city-wide broadband.

In 2004, then-Mayor Nickels created a Broadband Task Force to study some options. The task force’s report (pdf) recommended “citywide broadband service by 2015.” It also suggested the following:

Evaluate broadband technologies that might be used in a public network, especially FTTP, the bypass strategy, and use of wireless “last mile” as an interim step. An interim solution might produce revenue for the City, increase competition, demonstrate the City’s commitment to meeting its broadband goal, and serve as a first step towards an eventual FTTP build-out.

FTTP, or fiber-to-the-premises, is exactly what Google’s talking about building.

So what happened to the task force? In 2006, the task force released its own RFI, to determine if there were any private companies interested in building out such a network. After that, there was some push-back from the big telecom companies. From what I was able to uncover, a formal RFP was never issued, or was issued and never responded to.

Meanwhile, Seattle’s CTO Bill Schrier discussed an RFP in 2008, and has been quite vocal on his blog about the need to upgrade the city’s network. He and McGinn seem to see eye-to-eye on the need for high-speed broadband and it was part of McGinn’s campaign agenda.

So progress is happening, albeit slowly. In that regard, it’s important to see the Google effort as just one small piece of a larger agenda. Whatever happens with Google — and there are plenty of cities vying for the same pool of money — we shouldn’t let it distract us from the ultimate goal of city-wide FTTP broadband.

Last year, blogger Matt Yglesias took a look at the disparity in broadband speed among developed nations and concluded, “the high-performing countries are generally places where electronics manufacturers have more political clout than telecom firms and thus are able to force implementation of these open access policies. ”

In other words, if your country is home to companies like Nokia and Samsung that want to sell lots of shiny, net-enabled gadgets, you’re more likely to have cheap broadband.

Perhaps the rise of companies like Apple and Google (not to mention Microsoft), who benefit from cheap, ubiquitous high-speed broadband, along with a President who’s committed to a national broadband agenda, will finally be enough to turn the tide.

Posted in

red tube x videos x hamster

April Fools Suggestions

By Matt the Engineer on February 8, 2010

It occurred to me that the electronic signs in Link’s windows telling you their destination are almost useless, since we currently only have one line.  Also, the electronic signs announcing departing trains will be a bit sad, with only one destination announced per direction.  I therefore suggest the following use, for one day humor value:

1. Change train signs to destinations in other cities.  Since everyone in Seattle seems to come from California, I think something along the line of “N Judah” or “Pittsburgh / Bay Point” might be sufficiently disorienting.

2. Why limit the electronic signs to announcing the soonest trains to depart?  I’m picturing:

  • Westlake Center: 2 minutes
  • Westlake Center: 8 minutes
  • University District: 6 years
  • Overlake Transit Center: 20 years

Posted in

red tube x videos x hamster

Stabbing Prohibited

By Matt the Engineer on February 5, 2010

I love the stickers someone placed on Metro buses. Stabbing Prohibited and No Urinating.  This should remove a few common bus faux pas.

Posted in ,

red tube x videos x hamster

Coffee Clatch

By Frank on February 5, 2010

Reading this reminds me of this.

Ahh… memories.

Posted in

red tube x videos x hamster

West Side Light Rail

By Frank on February 3, 2010

I’m a few days behind on this, but I wanted to comment on Mayor McGinn’s private robo-boll on west side light rail, as reported by The Stranger:

This November, voters will decide a tax measure to fund light rail, pedestrian, and bicycle infrastructure. The measure authorizes up to two point one billion dollars in taxes over thirty-five years. If the election were today, would you vote yes to approve, or no to reject this tax measure?
66% Yes
21% No
13% Undecided

Notably, the ballot doesn’t break down the cost for the average voter, which I assume would make it less popular. Assuming that Seattle has to pick up the full cost, like the monorail, we’re probably looking at something on the order of $230 per household per year.* And that’s assuming the $2.1B includes financing costs. If it does, we’re talking, what, $700M or so for actual construction, assuming a 3:1 ratio? That’s not a ton of money for a 14-mile long light rail line.

I desperately want light rail to the west side of town, and I’m excited to support the Mayor in this effort. But the one thing we know about our new mayor is that he likes to announce elections first, and ask questions later. This needs to be done carefully, and with a plan. Would SDOT be managing this? Will there be federal money available? Sound Transit spent a decade building relationships with the feds. Has SDOT? Let’s make sure we do this right, and not wind up with another monorail situation.

* I’m figuring $2.1B divided by 250,000 households over 35 years.

Posted in

red tube x videos x hamster

SR-520, Transit and Tolls

By Frank on February 2, 2010

Decoding the pluses and minuses of the various SR-520 bridge replacement options is no easy task. Apparently several Seattle-based politicos have decided to oppose WSDOT’s preferred option, “A+” (option A is shown in the video above).

If I understand the argument correctly, A+ would offer 4 general-purpose lanes, 2 in each direction, plus one HOV lane in each direction (the current bridge has only 4 general purpose lanes). The Seattle coalition wants 4 GP lanes plus two transit-only lanes (no HOV). I guess their argument is two-fold: (a) HOV means more car traffic, and (b) transit-only lanes would be easier to convert to light rail at some point in the future.

My first reaction is that it’s crazy to not build HOV lanes. Giving people an incentive to carpool is important. It’s been said that most cars run at 25% capacity at rush hour (3 empty seats). Simply adding one person doubles that to 50%, resulting in twice as many people using the same number of cars. That’s huge.

Upon further reflection, though, I wonder how tolls will figure into this equation. Tolling will create its own incentive to carpool, and variable tolling can be used (if WSDOT has the stones) to manage demand so that traffic almost always runs smoothly in the GP lanes. If that’s the case, you could easily imagine it all working out.

Ultimately, I agree with Ben that the Montlake flyer stop is more important than any of this.

Posted in

red tube x videos x hamster
« PreviousNext »